If it was normal for all these people to leave, they wouldn't have to say it.It's our fault too for getting attached.
Diablo is going to be a crap mobile game that will make you feel like you need to buy things in the "free to play" game to feel competitive, just like in hearthstone.
Well, the actual designer, developer, and programmer are always caught between the hammer and the anvil of customer toxicity on one side and management toxicity on the other. At some point, you just burn out and need to move on. Even if you're working with a passion, at some point you'll ask yourself why, if all you get is %^&* from people you're creating the content for, be it creative or technical design. But that's how business has worked for a while, and only recently new management structures have been starting to pop up across the IT-related industries. A necessary change to break the staleness, but still very experimental and unlikely to work for a big corp like ATVI.Right, I might be sounding a bit bitter, but I've been in IT long enough to know these dynamics. People who don't understand your work trying to tell you how to do your job. If I had a copper for every occasion...
I find this honestly quite encouraging, as it's definitely disappointing as a player to see so many high profile and beloved names leave the company, but also a reminder of how Blizzard at its core is still strong and it's more an indication of burnout than anything else. Maybe I'm too much of an optimist for this community in particular, but I believe this just creates more room for other big names to rise up in the company. And how many of these developers were treated poorly by the community until they became martyrs for public outrage, like Metzen? We'll see lots of influential people come and go, as just bystanders who care about the fate of our favorite game, but it's important to remember that this is a pretty common thing in this industry. It's hard to work on one thing for such a long time, but it's clear that Blizzard fosters that dedication and passion until the end.Thanks to all the developers, new and old, who have made Blizzard games my favorite place to go, whether my own life is good or bad or anywhere in-between. World of Warcraft continues to be one of, if not the greatest game of all time (in my own opinion, at least).As a side note, one can't help but wonder if community toxicity plays a role in departures like these. For certain, it played a role in Metzen's departure, and I feel that the issue has only gotten worse since then.
I feel like the mention of a 7% revenue increase brought about by shadowlands is a bit misconstruing. The 7% increase itself isn't the thing, but rather, was that an increase AFTER the overall decrease that came about as a result of BfA?WoW was on a constant increase going through Wrath, then plateaued or dipped some in Cata. MoP was probably the highest the game had ever been. Then we went into the first major draught with Warlords and a substantial plunge in subs. Legion revitalized the game, but not in the same way MoP did. Numbers were back up, but you were never going to see Wrath or MoP levels again. Then BfA came. Content draught was bad in the earlier half, and the second half was plagued with compounding additional player power systems all the while the core player system azerite, nobody got to test.I tend not to pay attention when players quit, but BfA was a time that made even standing vanilla-wotlk veterans of the game leave, myself almost being one, and that's what made me start to pay attention more to the community starting quitting.Even with shared universes, Blizz has/had seven major IPs. Rts warcraft, WoW, starcraft, diablo, overwatch, HotS, and hearthstone. Both rts games are done. Warcraft 3's remaster was a nostalgic stopgap and starcraft 2, albeit getting small multiplayer bits now and then, is also finished. HotS is dead too, so that's three major points in the company's history, dead. If the development cycle on non-mmo titles is supposed to be only a few years at most, we should have had diablo 3 around 2006, but instead, it released a decade after diablo 2 came out, which released in 2002. Hell, if diablo 4 releases in 2022, that's another decade gap between releases. Even overwatch 2, which was revealed at blizzcon 2019, went radio silent til blizzconline 2021. Right now, blizzard is floundering. They could lose anything that isn't wow and be fine, but if wow dies, Blizz dies. Hearthstone doesn't make nearly enough to make the difference, overwatch is another shooter in a diluted market, only killing the games it did because it did what those other games tried to copy, but better, and diablo's development cycles are too long in a market where ppl want the sequel asap.Essentially Blizz has to absolutely deliver with shadowlands, and sadly, they aren't. Longer than usual point zero patch and piss poor class balance combined with more borrowed powers is hurting more than helping. Shadowlands in its release patch is already better than half of bfa and the game is still losing ppl. I'm always seeing shadowlands era posts and videos saying "im quitting" or "why I'm leaving wow for X". WoW was the Goliath of mmos, but there's been a David bringing it to its knees for years now.As for the big names leaving and forming their own things, if they were burned out, then they would have just retired. Instead they were tired of the monetary tyrant their child had become a part of and wanted to go back to when they could make games for their fans, not a board of directors or a group of faceless, indifferent shareholders.
Yes, 9.1 takes too much time to release and also spits into the face to the PvP players with all those badly designed pvp gear changes
15 years ago working at blizzard was a dream for everyone, now... kekw.
Activision Blizzard: Wooooooo! Our profits are through the roof... Staff and Dev Teams: But, you have missed the last 3 years of bonuses and raises...Community: You don't listen to us and you have dropped the ball on every major expansion and tier release for the last 3 years...Financial Report: You have lost over 25% of your player base over the last 3 years...Activision Blizzard: Yeeeeeeeah... DGAF... our profits are through the roof.No wonder everyone is jumping ship.
“There's a popular narrative among fans and media that Activision has been clamping down and exerting more influence over Blizzard design direction, but reports indicate that Blizzard continues to enjoy its own editorial independence“Suuuuuuure. Can’t imagine someone saying that with a straight face.
Sounds very normal for working in a large publicly traded company.
We need some positive here folks. Been playing since Wrath of the Lich King and experienced all the highs and lows of the game changes over those years. The highs have far outnumbered the lows in my opinion. Each year folks bixxx and complain about numerous things in the game play and balancing etc but in the long run each expansion or update has made changes that addressed the major ones and made interesting changes that refreshed the game to me. Shadowlands made some great changes for folks that do or don't do PVE, changes that were advantageous to players that play a number of alts, and somedays I even enjoy Torghast. It will never be perfect for each player because it is simply not possible to make everyone of the millions that play happy at the same time. My Shaman sucks at the moment, my Druid is wonderful, my Hunter pet keeps wandering into things it should not. All in all, I love this game and the all the people I have been fortunate to meet from all over the world.
In my opinion until Ion is replaced I don't think we will see any major, lasting improvements with WoW. Conduit Energy, power creep, lack of class balance, pvp gear eternally locked behind rating, boosting, same old WQ/shallow content, layer upon layer of systems, perception of a pad beta game...there's a big list of issues that just aren't being addressed by a management team led by a guy who's response to the problem of gear power deferential is now a meme.